


Etched Into Me is You

by Innocentfighter



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Time, Idiots in Love, Introspection, No Dialogue, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 23:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17011059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innocentfighter/pseuds/Innocentfighter
Summary: Soulmarks are part of the most important phrase your match will say to you. Jyn’s ties her to a life she hates and Cassian brands him to die for duty.





	Etched Into Me is You

**Author's Note:**

> I love Rogue One but, literally, everything in this pairing is so good. I didn't think I'd have anything to add. The true accomplishment here is that I actually wrote the Soulmate AU.

Jyn is born with a black band around her neck like a collar. Once the word started to clear as the universe settled on who was her match, her parents grew anxious. The day the word became legible they packed their lives up in three duffle bags and snuck onto a mining transport. She couldn’t read the word, but her Mama worried over it and her Papa looked contemplative. It made her dread for the day she knew what it meant and didn’t argue when Mama started making her wear shirts with collars that hid the word.       

Mama and Papa never got the chance to explain to her the meaning of her word or why she needed to keep it covered. She scratched at it as she hid in the dark and damp until someone came to save her.

The neck of her shirt had slid down with her fussing, and Saw Gerrera, once they were safe of Lah’mu he asked to see the entire word. Papa had told her to trust this man, so she tugged the neckline down further. It was the first and only time she had seen Saw smile genuinely.

“Hah,” he wheezed, “we’ll make a soldier of you yet.”

She could only think of pristine white and the sound of Mama dropping to the ground. Jyn didn’t want to be a soldier.

Saw taught her what her word meant.

“It means you’re a fighter. You’ll die before you give into the Empire.”

The rest of Saw’s soldiers would clap her on the back. She worked harder and became tougher than anyone else under Saw’s command. Jyn lied and stole and cheated and fought and killed because of the choker around her neck. Her place became Saw’s second and the underworld knew of Saw’s prodigy. They called her the Chosen One in some circles. Older men, the men who looked like you’ve seen them a hundred times sneered at the title.

“I hope not,” one spat.

“We’ve had enough chosen ones for this lifetime,” another said.

He was sadder than anyone Jyn had ever seen. She didn’t care about his story, but she couldn’t help but wonder at being this Chosen One if everyone hated it.

While she stood at Saw’s back, she wore her throat barred and head tilted back, she had a place and she had respect. She would bow to no one again and she wanted nothing to do with whoever this mark signified. Rebellions were nothing but a few bold fools unwilling to go gently to their fate.

Jyn just wanted to survive. It didn’t matter who ruled the galaxy.

After Saw abandoned her, Jyn learned quick why her parents taught her to cover it. She couldn’t have a secret identity if people knew about it. The Empire branded her a traitor while her father was hailed a hero. A high neck shirt could be too obvious or too misleading to those with sharp eyes. A leather collar to cover it had too many connotations.

Instead she wore her jacket high around her shoulders and scarf bundled tightly, she hunched over against the oppression of the empire or another lost soul on worlds that still thought they had a chance. Eventually, she found a skin paint that lasted long enough to be useful and she became another kind of wanderer.

Jyn had _rebellion_ tied around her throat.

* * *

Cassian’s mark took two years to form. His Mam told him it was because his soulmate hadn’t been born yet. The band was thick, and he couldn’t help but want to learn what the mark meant. Mam and Da told him what the placement meant. He would always be supported by his match.

It was exciting that his mark was in an easily hidden place, that meant it was his, but that it was also in a place that he could easily see. Every morning he would wake up in excitement to see if the universe had found his match yet. Cassian thinks the mark is important because none of the other children have a band quite so thick.

He didn’t find out the word until he was ten and already forging himself in the rebellion. The day he woke up an noticed it he felt a faint surprise but no excitement. Spies don’t get _matches._ Attachments are dangerous. Attachments made you less effective. Most spies choose to have their marks removed, the few that don’t shuffle reports for the rest of their lives. He doesn’t notice what the word is.

Wanting nothing more than to serve and having nothing left to lose, he marched himself to the medical bay.

Major Draven stopped his removal. Cassian was still learning Basic, but even he knew what the word meant once he took the time to read it. He looked up at Draven and the man’s lips were pursed as if deep in thought.

Among the intelligence agents, he became an outcast, if not for his skill but because he kept his mark. Innocuous as it was it was still more than others to keep. Usually, no one found out about it, and if they did it was because they were a rebellion medic, or the Op had gone pear-shaped and they needed to be eliminated regardless.

Cassian knew why he got to keep his mark, the word was powerful in its own way comforting in another. On days he hated himself less he thought about who the mark signified. Someone in the rebellion he figured, no one else burned the torch so brightly.

In the field, he kept a thigh holster around it. It started when he was a child, some fancy of his but as he grew older it became more of a habit. To those that worked with him and knew what secrets he hid under his clothes, it became a symbol to them.

Whispers likened him to a legend. He wanted to remain anonymous because intelligence was the only thing he was good at.

Older men, the men that look like a hundred others that he’s seen, whisper too.

“There’s always a man bigger than the cause,” one would shake his head.

“The good men become martyrs,” one said sadly, “others just become cowards.”

Cassian just wanted to do his duty. Fight for a cause that he believed in and stripped him of everything. Martyrs were dead, and cowards soon would be. In the end, everyone dies.

He learned to rely on the mark for comfort less. Instead, it became a tool, a way to encourage troops or a way to add a little more threat to his words. In the end, he was just another soldier to be used until useless.

Cassian had _hope_ holstered on his thigh.

* * *

**_Rebellions_ ** _are built on **hope**._

* * *

He doesn’t realize it until there’s no looming death over their heads.

Cassian notices it first because while he’s on medical leave, it’s still his job to be observant. It’s his pleasure to be trusted so deeply by Jyn.

There’s a morning where her skin paint is flaking off and just as she rolls in her sleep Cassian catches the word on her throat. He’s still staring when she wakes up.

She grins, its careless and breathtaking and Cassian thanks to every deity that he knows that he gets to see that smile. He prays to every deity he knows that the smile will always be directed at him.

There’s too much fear in his bones to call it anything else but he knows in his heart that he’s a lost man for Jyn.

Jyn rolls on to him, bare-chested and still smiling. Her eyebrow is quirked in that odd way of hers. It’s a question and a dare in one gesture.

Cassian is weak to it, but he wouldn’t dare push a barrier she hasn’t let down for him yet, so he cautiously rubs at her throat. She tenses and her eyes narrow, he doesn’t _think_ he’ll be stabbed but he doesn’t _know_ that either. He knows he wouldn’t mind it if that’s the payment for the transgression.

Instead, she tumbles off him. He watches her and mildly wonders when she put on clothes, the pants are too large, so he knows they’re his, but again, he doesn’t mind. A few minutes pass and his patience is rewarded but a still topless Jyn returning to the bed. The skin paint is gone from her throat.

He traces the words and his eyes crinkle. Cassian knows there’s a pain in being branded so obviously, but the word are so painfully his that he can’t help but ignore the stories they’ll have to have later. Jyn doesn’t grow uneasy at the touch, but she does settle on top of him with some impatience.

Strangely enough, he feels parts of him that have been stripped away come back to him, and he wants to hope.

* * *

She doesn’t realize it until Cassian is looking at her like he’s in love.

The thumb on her throat is enough to cause electricity to run down her spine, but it’s Cassian and she knows he wouldn’t kill her unless there was a very good reason. Even then she doubts his willingness.

Jyn lets Cassian have this moment. She doesn’t trust the universe enough to think that this is hers. It’s his, she has no doubt, hasn’t doubted since he welcomed her home.

There’s too much fear in her bones to even think the words but she knows that Cassian is where her heart is anchored. Force, she wants to run but for once escape plans and fake identities rest in the back of her mind unwilling to be awoken.

Instead, she adds more of her weight to him, which doesn’t bother him as much as it should, and raises an eyebrow.

Cassian looks a little dazed, his thumb still uncomfortable- _there's_ _no danger-_ close to her hyoid. Jyn tilts off him dragging his hand into hers and safely away from her neck for the time being.

The movement shakes him out of wherever he went. He looks carefully content. Jyn pouts along with her raised an eyebrow this time and Cassian leans over to nose at her nose before sitting up.

She lets her eyes track his chest, they hesitate on the thin leather cord with a shard of kyber bound to it. The necklace didn’t survive but it didn’t die, now each of Rogue One is bound like the shard to leather. Cassian untangles himself from the blanket and finally, she sees the word.

It makes entirely too much sense and not enough at the same time. Jyn skims her fingers along the leg, and Cassian shivers towards her touch.

She smiles, it's soft and unfamiliar on her face. There had to have been a comfort in the word as much pain as there was in her own and there are stories they’ll tell each other later. For now, she surges towards him, he meets her halfway (half expecting half wanting).

Cassian tugs her back with him, ever so careful with things that would make her run.

For once, Jyn wants to rebel against her own promise.

**Author's Note:**

> As always leave your thoughts below.


End file.
